Introduction

When the team led by Prof. E B Cowell translated the Jātakaṭṭhavaṇṇanā into English in the late 19th century it was a breakthrough effort that took decades to complete, and laid a strong foundation for the translation of the rest of the texts in the Pāḷi canon.

Most of the interest in these early translations was in their folk-story character, how many of them had entered into traditional stories in the west, and how they migrated from culture to culture. Consequently they were much less interested in doctrinal matters, which became very apparent when updating the translation last year. See The Jātaka Translation, revised by Ānandajoti Bhikkhu elsewhere on this website.

They were also not so interested in such things as the grammatical explanations provided in the commentary, and they didn’t translate the gāthāvaṇṇanā (explanations of the verses), even though it makes up roughly 20% of the commentary, and the translators only rarely quoted some of what they found the more interesting material from these sections.

Although the early dictionaries, like Pali Text Society’s Pali-English Dictionary and A Critical Pāli Dictionary, did utilize the Jātaka word definitions considerably, up and till now no one has translated the word commentaries into English in full. It is this gap that the present work seeks to fill with a new translation of the 500 verses of the first three books, together with their explanations, which takes us up to Jātaka 300.

Text and Translation

The text used for this translation in essentially that found on Cst4 (Cst), which is a digitalisation of the Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyaṇa Tipiṭaka from the Burmese tradition. I have occasionally compared this with PTS (Faüsboll, 1877-1896), and rarely I have preferred the PTS reading. All such changes are recorded in the footnotes.

The text, which is published in full elsewhere on this website, has been reformatted, repunctuated and redivided in accordance with the standards I have developed, and does not match that found on Cst4. The equivalent PTS page numbers, which are added for reference, are placed in curly braces, and are in the form {vol.page}. Most of the word commentaries are from the Jātaka verse under consideration, but some have been brought in from other volumes, when we are referred to them by the original story. These are marked with green text.

In what follows the canonical materials are shown in black text, as are, for instance, all the verses, which are considered canonical, and other quotations from the canon found in the commentary.

When a word from the verse is quoted verbatim, I have placed it in italics and it the quotation is in black. I also use italics when filling in sections when quoting from the canon. They were marked with ...pe... in the original, but I believe the bhāṇaka would have filled them in, as I do here. The two usages should be easily distinguishable.

The Cowell-led translation, although it managed to get the gist of the verses over most times, was not at all accurate or precise in its translation, so this work also acts as a corrective there, and perhaps also as a warning about how loose some of the early translations were.

The translation of the verses is in metered English. Siloka verses are generally translated with 8-syllable lines, but I have sometimes taken the pair of lines together as one 16-syllable line. Occasionally these verses are translated as 6-syllabic lines. Tuṭṭhubha (11 syllables in Pāḷi), and Jāgatī (12-syllables) are normally translated into 10-syllabic lines, as are the Mattacchandas verses, and occasionally with 12-syllabic lines. See below for an analysis of the verses.

Unlike the Dhammapada, for instance, where the verses stand as ethical statements in and of themselves, the verses from the Jātakas often refer back to the story itself, and are only properly understood within that context, so I have included a synopsis of the story for reference. For the complete story I refer the student to my revised translation of the Jātaka.

Elsewhere I have also retranslated in full the first three Jātakas, and also two others, Ja 273 and 526, which were only partially translated in the Cowell translation.

At present I am publishing the verses and commentary from the first book (Ekanipāta, 150 verses) of the Jātaka, and will add in verses from the second (200 verses), and third book (150 verses), which are out for review at the moment, as soon as they are ready.

Quotations from the Tipiṭaka

As will be seen below the commentaries are sometimes of great interest, though it is true that many times they are also fairly mundane. Of the 150 verses in the first book, only Ja 5 has no commentary on the verse, and some have extensive disquisitions.

The word commentary on the first Jātaka (Apaṇṇakajātaka), quotes the Apaṇṇakasutta (AN 3.16) in its commentary, and the (Abhidhamma) Vibhaṅga (para 809, PTS pg. 317), besides having many other interesting comments. This Jātaka and Ja 2, Ja 3, Ja 273 and Ja 526 I have translated in full, including the word commentaries, elsewhere on the website.

Other places where the Mūla texts are quoted include the following:

Ja 2, includes a section from SN 2.22; a versification of a section found in MN 70, and passim.

Ja 6 quotes from AN 3.40, and from the Paṭisambhidāmagga (PTS vol. 1 p. 122), MN 49 Brahmanimantanikasutta, and the (Abhidhamma) Vibhaṅga 18.6.1 (PTS p. 422). It also an original and interesting disquisition on the doctrinal terms hiri-ottappa, conscience and concern.

Ja 9 quotes the first 2 lines of Thag 73, and the two lines that make up the verse strike me as genuine, though not now found in the canon.

Ja 61 quotes Ja 534 Mahāhaṁsajātaka, vs. 30, calling it a discourse (sutta).

Ja 70 quotes Dhammapada 103, also calling it a discourse (sutta).

Ja 96 quotes the Dhammapada verses 35-39, followed by verse 33; it also quotes DN 31 Siṅgālasutta; Ja 514 Chaddantajataka, vs 8; Ja 377 Setaketujātaka, vs. 2, and Khp 6, Snp 2.1 Ratanasutta.

Reuse of the Verses

Many of the verses have been reused elsewhere in a variety of ways. Sometimes a verse in one Jātaka recurs in other Jātakas, sometimes with small variations, such as a change of name, or a change of one word.

For instance, the verse from Ja 8 Gāmanijātaka also appears much later in the collection in Ja 538 Mūgapakkhajātaka vs. 30 and 41; the verse from Ja 41 Losakajātaka is also found in Ja 42 Kapotajātaka, Ja 43 Veḷukajātaka and Ja 378 Darīmukhajātaka vs. 3. The verse in Ja 51 Mahāsīlavajātaka is also found in Ja 52 Cullajanakajātaka, Ja 124 Ambajātaka, Ja 483 Sarabhamigajātaka and Ja 539 Mahājanakajātaka.

Sometimes a verse appears in other parts of the Tipiṭaka. So the verse from Ja 35 Vaṭṭakajātaka is also found in the retelling of the same story in the Cariyāpiṭaka, Cp 29:10; Ja 10 Sukhavihārijātaka can also be found in Thag 11.1 vs. 4; and the Ja 31 Kulāvakajātaka verse is found at SN 11.6 vs. 1, etc.

And we also find verses that occur both within and outside the Jātaka collection. For instance the verse from Ja 12 Nigrodhamigajātaka occurs again in the Jātakas at Ja 445 Nigrodhajātaka, vs. 10, and in the Apadāna at Tha-ap 537, vs. 17. The verse from Ja 55 Pañcāvudhajātaka is also found in the following story Ja 56 Kañcanakkhandhajātaka, as well as one of the verses at Ja 156 Alīnacittajātaka, and outside the Jātakas it occurs at Iti 17 vs. 3 and Thag 16 vs. 7.

As there are nearly 7,000 verses in this collection, I didn’t think it was necessary to examine all of them. The results for the first book are shown in the table below. Only those Jātakas where verses recurred are shown, and only whole verses, not partial matches, but this should give an idea of how widespread reuse has been:

Commentarial Methods

There are various types of definition that are employed in the Jātakapadavaṇṇanā. A non-exhaustive list, with examples, includes the following:

More regular form
(Ja 21):
those hounds means those dogs.

Amplification
(Ja 48):
Cetā thieves means the thieves from the country of Cetā.

Playing on words (homynym)
(Ja 56):
Cheerful in his mind means being free from hindrances he is cheerful in his mind, like gold that is beaten.

Paraphrase
(Ja 40):
In this connection, this is the substance of it:
followed by a prose restatement of the verse.

Synonym(s)
(Ja 45):
intelligent means, wise, knowledgable, understanding.

Explaining a vocative
(Ja 15):
Kharādiya, he calls him by name.

Folk etymology
(Ja 36):
Tree means jagati is said to be the earth, as trees are born there jagatiruha (tree) is said.

Definition
(Ja 39):
Herein, he who means whatever person.

Analysing a compound
(Ja 61):
Worldly women means women of the world.

Case usage
For one sitting too long, this is a genitive in the instrumental sense.

Explaining (bad) grammar
(Ja 45):
Is a fool with compassion, here with yaṁ, a change of gender has been made. Or, yaṁ is a particle with a negative meaning, if not a fool with compassion, this is the meaning.

By no means are all words or phrases explained only those considered to be difficult, or ambiguous by the commentator, and as he says at Ja 13: “The meaning of the rest is clear. From here on without saying this much again, only whatever is not clear will be explained.”

English-Only Version

I have included the verse in Pāḷi in this edition so that it can be compared with the translation, but for a full text and translation of the verses and their commentary I must refer the reader to the edition in the Text and Translation section, where the complete text is given together with an interlinear translation.

The English-only version of this text is slightly abbreviated from the full translation, as some comments only make sense when we can see the Pāḷi word also. I have also abbreviated the Introduction and the notes for the same reason.

Acknowledgements

Any work of this difficulty and complexity has to be reviewed by competent experts in the field before publication. I have been very fortunate indeed to have Prof Kapila Abhayavansa read the whole work through and make many valuable corrections, which has saved me from numerous mistakes.

Dr Junko Matsumura, though being inundated with other work, read through the first 17 of the translations, and this helped me enormously in understanding the structure of the language.

Dr Matsumura and Dr Aleix Ruiz-Falqués also read through a number of specific sentences I was having difficulty in interpreting, and that has helped me to understand them better.

I have many times spoken with Ven Shravasti Dhammika, who has wide knowledge both of ancient Indian culture and of the flora and fauna of the region, and this helped me understand context and specifics in these areas of research.

Of course, in such a large work, despite all the help I have received, there are sure to be inaccuracies remaining, and these are my fault alone. I would be grateful to anyone who can send corrections, and I always update promptly, and with acknowledgement of help received.

Ānandajoti Bhikkhu
June, 2022

 

last updated: July 2022